The Poems of Mary Oliver

September 10, 2015

From the time she published her first book of poetry in 1963, Mary Oliver served as a guide for her readers into the natural world, just as Robert Frost did before her. In her poems, as Joyce Carol Oates put it in a review in the New Republic, “one lives in two worlds, that of the personal and familial, and that of the impersonal and inhuman.”

On Oliver’s birthday, we celebrate the poet’s prolific career with two poems from the New Republic's archive.

The Lamb

I did not know that in the world there lurkedVarious death:Fangs and fruits and falling trees.Mushrooms and a writhing mud.I did not know that in the worldGrew sinister berries and dubious roots.I was young and quick, I was wary of none of these.I drank black water and clattered through caves.I was a creature of the shepherd, and this was my game.

All day longI sipped and I nibbled: shoots from glistening trees;Tart berries, for the sake of their shining husks; garlandsThat fostered a bane under their bright petals; poolsWith fevers in their dark mirrors I found, and drank from every one.And not till I laySwelled and cracked on the grass didI guess what I had eaten.Not till I layWith crumbling hooves kicking the grassDid I guess what I had done.

My shepherd and my flockCalled for me down the dusky fields; but childhoodHad no potion that could lave over this fever.And they called and they called in vain

Originally published on June 16, 1973

Blackleaf Swamp

I'm going to Blackleaf Swamp.I'll be back tomorrow.Maybe.

I want to seeThe hunting owls ride byAll glassy-eyed and gloomy.

I want to see Pools where the striped snakes cool The burden of their backs.

Where the muskrat floats. And the lilies shiver Under the fingers of the moon.

If I am a woman, and tame. Does it mean I cannot be Part bird, part beast?

And if this is so, why does a wing in the air Sweep against my blood Like a small sharp oar?

And if I am alive, but must die.

Is it not proper to study Darkness and trees and water?

Along the shore The grass is so green and fine. It feels like the love of my mother.